Netlify
Front-end hosting platform, direct Vercel competitor. Deploy from Git, auto preview URLs, serverless functions, global edge network, identity, forms.
Strengths
- Dead-simple setup: connect GitHub, deploy in 30 sec
- Free plan with no card and no surprise bill: the meter stops the site instead of charging you
- Built-in Netlify Forms and Identity, useful for landing pages with contact form
- Real Vercel competitor without the Next.js coupling
Limitations
- Edge functions less powerful than Vercel Edge Middleware
- Documentation thinner than Vercel for recent frameworks
- Metered free plan: 300 credits a month, 15 credits per production deploy, 20 credits per GB of bandwidth. Twenty deploys in a month are enough to burn it all ([Instagram reel Ddove6tDUa5](https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ddove6tDUa5/))
- At zero credits, no bill: all your sites are paused until next month, and the free plan does not let you buy credits to bring them back
Best for
- Vite, Astro, SvelteKit SPAs that don't need Vercel's Next.js tooling
- Landing pages needing Forms/Identity without dedicated backend